The Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Forums have word that free character transfers are coming on December 2 to Mythic's MMORPG, which is the positive news coming out of the plan to close another two US servers, Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne (thanks IncGamers). Here's word:

Here at Mythic Entertainment we have always placed a high value on our communities and the players that make them up. This is especially true when it comes to our special rule-set servers like Role-Playing and Open RvR. There are many different things that have to be taken into consideration in order to nurture these communities. At the same time, WAR is a game that thrives on player interaction; whether it’s Public Quests, fast paced Scenario action or the thrill of large-scale Open-field Realm vs. Realm battles. Both of these factors must be taken under consideration when deciding the future of our unique rule-set servers.

For the past 14 months the Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne servers have been the home of two vibrant and passionate communities. We have watched these servers with great interest as they have journeyed through some amazing accomplishments since the launch of WAR, such as the first ever king kill on a North American server.

And so, it is after careful evaluation and much discussion that we are announcing free character transfers off of the Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne servers. At this time we plan to enable these free character transfers on Wednesday, December 2nd. Below are the prospective destination servers for both Phoenix Throne and Dark Crag:

Phoenix Throne will be able to transfer to either Iron Rock OR Badlands

Dark Crag will be able to transfer to either Gorfang OR Volkmar

In order to welcome all of our players to their new homes we will be enabling a 20% bonus to experience and renown during the weeks following the open character transfers.

WoW has such a head start over any new MMORPG that entering the market is pretty tough, unless you're aiming for another theme - space, Christian 2nd century, etc - in which case you just need to 'beat' EVE. WoW has the fantasy genre more or less sewn up at this point, there is no more fantasyness to be enjoyed.

I for one am hoping they sort STO out, as that looks to be as fluffy and fun as WoW. Or at least could be, the latest videos demonstrated that it's still work in progress.

as for why they added so many people after launch, i blame the MMO FOTM community on that. You know, the poeple who get in on beta and pre-order, then become disinterested, bitch and complain about the game in game chat and ultimately move on to the next great (or not so great MMO). Darkfall, AoC, Aion anyone? Didn't think so.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the MMO community. If you are going to win at the MMO building game, you need to win the MMO community, not expect them to accept buggy, broken and badly designed rubbish, and then blame them when they leave. You certainly can't expect that to work when you are working in a market with half a dozen other successful competitors, including a behemoth like WoW.

Fortresses were still 100% broken on my server 4 months after I bought the game, and my sub and patience ran out. General RVR zones could safely be described as open player count alterac valleys with numerous disincentives to actually fight, and almost every later pve encounter had sufficient aoe to completely break the design of my class.

I hear that when they finally effectively removed the fortress cockblock that the endgame was all broken anyway.

i'm happy they are merging, more people for me to kill. I have a good time with this game even though 99% of my guildmates moved to the next MMO of the month.

Many of the playerbase have been asking for merges due to low population counts

as for why they added so many people after launch, i blame the MMO FOTM community on that. You know, the poeple who get in on beta and pre-order, then become disinterested, bitch and complain about the game in game chat and ultimately move on to the next great (or not so great MMO). Darkfall, AoC, Aion anyone? Didn't think so.

The impression I got from the screenshots and videos was always that this game looks eerily similar to WoW. I guess the question is if it looks so much like WoW, why not just play WoW?

All in all, I love seeing MMO's fail. Hopefully it will get developers and publishers to realize that WoW notwithstanding, making MMO's isn't a license to print money. Not everyone wants to endlessly grind away at some fantasy time and money sink day after day, night after night.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

I've always been kind of "meh" when it came to Warhammer Fantasy...though I did play the hell out of the clickfests that both Shadow of the Horned Rat I and Dark Omen are...

I really hope that THQ does something good with the 40k mmo that they are working on...

This comment was edited on Nov 25, 2009, 15:25.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishfull thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.-Robert Heinlein

This is unfortunate news. I do not play WAR (I did play for about 2 months, at launch), but I welcome competition in the MMO market. WoW is sitting pretty, which is fine, but competition is what truly spurs innovation. Or, at the very least,encourages the betterment of competing products.

And as Joe Napalm said... Blizzard has pretty shamelessly retooled Warhammer and Warhammer 40k into Warcraft and Starcraft respectively.

On one hand, this makes me sad. Warhammer & WH40K deserve some recognition, and it's depressing to see Blizzard rolling in filthy filthy lucre when they basically flat-out ripped off Warcraft and Starcraft from the WH and 40K universe.

Also, in a land of WoW-clones, WAR actually has some really innovative features as far as open-world group quests and such. Interesting to see the incestious clone of the WH rippoff actually coming up with some really good ideas.

On the other hand, whoever decided that WAR needed a metric $#%@-ton of new servers right after launch? That person/committee/mouthbreather is a bloody idiot. I mean, that's really sugar-coating it - that was incredibly stupid, and is probably one of the leading causes of their inevitable demise.

Ah well.

I'll refrain from the rant about how they're further defiling the spirit of WFRP by putting out a totally unnecessary 3rd Edition. The 1st Edition was nearly perfect, and an inspiration for much of the improvements made in 3e D&D - the 2nd Edition of WFRP was just polishing the diamond from the rough...after something like 15 years...and now they're puking out a 3rd Edition to try to milk it.